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the piercing eyes. As the train slowed at the station, though, I saw the boy move toward the doors. My eyes widened in spite of myself. Was he following me?
    I tried to think back, to remember if I’d seen him around at the Academy or on the train before now. I didn’t know. I spent so much time making sure I acted normally, I was sometimes oblivious to the subjects around me. I stepped off the train and entered the flow of kids my age heading toward the Academy entrance tunnel. Then, with a flood of relief, I felt the familiar tingling sensation at the corners of my mind, marking the return of the Link connection. I embraced it, letting my fear drift away into nothingness.
    *
    It was lunchtime when I glitched again. I blinked a few times, then stared down at my plate until I was adjusted. I’d let myself go numb all morning while I was Linked, not even trying to fight that last inch of complete control. But now that I was all to myself again, the fear I’d successfully subdued all morning came rushing right back.
    I was sitting alone in the Academy cafeteria, one of the largest open spaces in our sector. It was a wide, low-ceilinged room with columns placed every fifteen feet throughout for support. It was bare, utilitarian, and gray, like everything else. There was light chatter in the dim cafeteria, students discussing classwork mostly.
    Several luminescent 3-D projection cubes were set up on some tables with varying figures rotating inside them as students worked on assignments. One group of students was studying the internal mechanics of bionic data nanodes. Another group examined the image of a rotating human head. As I watched, one student clicked on the translucent skull. The model zoomed in to reveal lobes of the brain. Another click revealed the complex bustles of nerves, tissue, and thin Link hardware threaded all throughout. Training and studying all day for the time we’d reach adulthood, receive our final V-chip, and join the Community workforce alongside our parents. Everything was normal.
    But inside, I was still recovering from the morning’s close call. Clearly I needed to find a better method of controlling my glitches. There were no guarantees that there would be a well-timed train to rescue me next time. And I was starting to suspect that the boy on the train, the one with the bright blue-green eyes, was a sign of an even greater danger. A sign that I had likely already been reported a few times as anomalous.
    When a report of an anomaly was logged in the Community records, a Monitor would be sent to discreetly observe and report whether the subject was malfunctioning enough to warrant repairs before their biannual diagnostic checkup. That was the Monitor’s job: to locate and identify anomalous glitchers. And they were experts at it—more observant and keen than the average subject, and more aware of the minor symptoms of glitching than the brute Regulators. They had no distinguishing hardware or features. They were like ghosts, hidden within the ranks, anywhere and nowhere all at once.
    Maybe someone had noticed the way I faltered when I glitched at the Academy. Or what if my parents or Markan had found my sketches? Would they have reported me if they had? I swallowed again. Of course they would. There was no such concept as loyalty to the family unit, only loyalty to Community. Even then, it wasn’t an emotion, only clear, cold logic. An anomaly observed is an anomaly reported.
    I glanced at the four Regulators stationed at each corner of the room. The Regulators at the Academy were younger than the ones I’d see patrolling the Markets and at the subway; they were Regulators-in-training. My chest jumped at the sight of them, but I soothed myself with the knowledge that there was no need to worry. If someone had reported me to Central Systems for what happened on the train platform this morning, I would have been taken away by now. Still, I glanced back and forth between the crowd and my salad,